ARMIDALE Youth Refuge are calling on people to speak up against domestic violence, following Youth Homelessness Matters Day.
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The refuge, run by Pathfinders, hosted an open day in conjunction with the national awareness initiative on Wednesday.
Youth worker Laban Burgess said the community has a “largely unseen” population with the service’s statistics showing about 190 homeless young people in the city.
“The leading causes of homelessness is domestic violence and mental health,” Mr Burgess said.
He said until recently Armidale had been considered one of the worst communities for domestic violence “so it’s not rocket science to follow if you’ve got the leading cause of homelessness in the town then you have homelessness”.
“We have a large couch-surfing community. It’s a really tough situation because lots of the causes of homelessness go on behind closed doors, such as domestic violence, but if you know something is going on call the authorities or police,” Mr Burgess said.
“Just because the domestic violence is happening next door doesn’t mean people should close the window. You have to call someone and let them know.”
Youth Homelessness Matters Day (YHMD) is a national campaign aimed at raising awareness of youth homelessness. Mr Burgess said young people faced some of the toughest challenges in securing accommodation.
“Outside of speaking out, there needs to be more housing options for these young people,” Mr Burgess said.
“It’s a huge problem that we are tackling because being a young person is a massive handicap – real estates don’t want to rent to them with no rental history.
“We have young people staying at the refuge who have applied for every rental property in the city.
”The community needs to aware that it is a problem. If you think someone is going wrong, tell someone about it. The worst thing someone can do is thinking it isn’t their problem because it is our problem.” The Armidale Youth Refuge provides support for youth who are homeless in the area.